This invention relates to coin-operated rental lockers (hereinafter referred to as coin-lockers when applicable) and more particularly to a system for controlling a coin-locker.
Conventional coin-lockers are so designed that all of the coin-lockers which are used are rendered unopenable at a certain time instant, for instance at 12 o'clock midnight, regardless of the time from which the use of the coin-lockers has started, and after the certain time instant (12 o'clock midnight) the coin-lockers cannot be unlocked without paying an additional rental fee. Therefore, sometimes a user must pay a rental fee for two-day use to unlock the coin-locker even though it has been used for only one hour, for instance. Thus, the collection of rental fees in conventional coin-lockers is not always reasonable.